CORRESPONDENCES (Live) Soundwalk Collective & Patti Smith

b. 1946, Chicago, US; lives and works in New York, US.

Patti Smith is a writer, artist and performer. She is the author of the National Book Award winner, Just Kids (2010), as well as Woolgathering (1992), M Train (2015), Book of Days (2022) and Bread of Angels (2025). Her seminal album Horses has been hailed as one of the top 100 albums of all time. Her global exhibitions include Strange Messenger (The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh) Land 250 (Fondation Cartier, Paris), Veil (Robert Miller Gallery, New York), Camera Solo (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford), and Eighteen Stations (Robert Miller Gallery, New York).

In 2005, the French Ministry of Culture awarded Smith the title of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, Smith is also the recipient of Sweden’s Polar Prize for significant achievements in music. She has received the 2020 PEN Literary Service Award and the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest order of merit. In 2024 she was awarded the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Medal. Smith is a major collaborator with Soundwalk Collective.

Stephan Crasneanscki (b. 1969, Odessa; lives and works in New York, US) and Simone Merli (b. 1978, Milan; lives and works in Berlin, Germany).

Composed of contemporary artist Stephan Crasneanscki and producer Simone Merli, Soundwalk Collective integrate sound, film, and mixed media in site- and context-specific artwork. Evolving along multi-disciplinary lines, they have cultivated long-term creative collaborations with artist and writer Patti Smith, late director Jean-Luc Godard, photographer Nan Goldin, choreographer Sasha Waltz, and actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg, among others.

Central to their artistic philosophy is the exploration of sound as a medium to navigate and interpret the complexities of human experience and environment. Their original score for Laura Poitras’s All the Beauty and the Bloodshed contributed to the film’s Golden Lion win at the Venice Film Festival.

Soundwalk Collective have performed and exhibited at a diverse range of institutions, including BAM, New York; MAC/CCB – Museum of Contemporary Art and Architecture Centre, Lisbon; Centre Pompidou, Paris; documenta, Athens and Kassel; Fondation Cartier, Paris; Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan; kurimanzutto, New York; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Louvre Abu Dhabi; Manifesta, Palermo; Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo; Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Onassis Stegi, Athens; Piknic Seoul, Reethaus, Berlin; Volksbühne, Berlin; and Zaha Hadid’s Mobile Art Pavilion.